I knock at the office door, "Hey, Therese. I'm here to give you more work."

A muted voice can be heard from within the room, "Can you just go away? I've already enough on my plate as it is..."

"Eh, no, sorry, can't do. I have some serious concerns over the documents you gave me."

I can hear her sigh, "Urgh, fine, come in."

I enter Therese's office. Mountains of documents decorate her desk.

She doesn't look well either, "So what is it? Can you make it quick? As you can see, I already have my hands full with work. and I'd like to not leave all of this work for the next generation."

"What, already planning your retirement?", I take a seat.

She frowns, "As if I got a choice. My retirement will be in a few months. There, happy now?"

"No, why would I? Who else will I annoy with my requests? Are you at least available to help your replacement in case of emergency?"

Therese scoffs at me, "Eh, no? I'll be dead. What else would retirement mean?"

"Where I'm from, it means having worked enough, that you can enjoy life without worry about money and shit."

"Lucky you", she belittles me, "For us, retirement is when our time is up. No when, ifs or buts about it, Jared."

"Aside from the bags under your eyes, you don't look that old yet. What makes you certain you'll die that soon?"

She shrugs, "That's just how it is, always was. A few days after our thirty-seventh birthday our bodies stop functioning."

"Okay, that is not funny, Therese. Stop it with the poor jokes, you're not a comedian."

She glares at me, "I'm not joking, I don't have time to fool around. I'm serious about this."

You've got to be kidding me! The maximum life expectancy of people here is a measly 37 years!? How? Why?

Way to ruin my mood, "And here I wanted to ask you a couple of questions and then play a prank on you as payback for our first meeting."

She thinks for a moment before asking, "...what did I supposedly do to you?"

I recount, "Imprisoning me in a room, forcing me to take a useless class and-"

She barely suppressed laughter, "Just be happy I let you live back then. I was well within my rights to kill you on the spot."

"Since when? Didn't you say that the fortress's automatic law enforcement tied your hands on that until I was proven guilty?"

She explains, "Exactly, and you met that criteria the moment you admitted to murder, circumstances be damned."

"Hey, that's unfair, you're not on trial for eating bread! ...so, why did you really spare me then? Considering the damage the other vampires did despite observation, I have a hard time believing then that you would let that opportunity slip."

She is astonished, "You got me there. Showing would be simpler than explaining, guess I have to move that introduction ahead", she sighs, "Give me a moment."

I have no idea what she might be on about this time...

She gets up, leaves the office for a moment and shouts, "CLARA!"

After that, I only hear whispering.

She returns, "This will take a few minutes. I can explain once we're there. In the meantime, you wanted to ask me a few other things, right? Go ahead."

"You better not try to trick me again."

She sighs, "I'm not. Promise. So what was on your mind?"

I don't trust her, but I accept it for now, "Fine. So first up, Chloe said that there are issues with the Magic Initiate class but she couldn't give me any details. What is the problem with it? It seems tailor-made to get someone into a real caster class. And previously you stated that getting more casters was important."

She starts to lecture me, "You would think that, but there are multiple issues. I guess you don't have the full overview of its skills yet, so let me fill in the gaps... There you go."

Magic Initiate Growth Rates

32 HP, 5 MP, 24 SP, 3 STR, 5 DEX, 3 VIT, 1 MAG, 1 FTH, 2 WIL, 4 CHA Magic Apprentice

Passive

Increase MAG and FTH by (3x skill level) and MP by (25x skill level). Magic Graduation

Passive

For the purpose of adding a base caster class, treat requirements as (skill level+5)% lower.

If this skill has at least level 15 and you have no other caster class:

you can add one basic caster class without using a "Class Core". Scholarship

Passive

You gain the special "Academic" class, it can't be obtained in any other way.

It does not count toward your class limit.

Its level is always half of this skill's level, rounded down, minimum level 1.

"Where did you get that info from, Therese?"

She belittles me, "Did you think we're just sitting lazily on our asses all day? We have recorded most skills of most classes. Well, info on elite classes is more restricted..."

Come on, that was important! I needed that before, "And why was I not told about that earlier? I could've needed that before choosing the Summoner class!"

It might have been so worth it to delay for Caller or Invoker instead if I would have had that intel for a more informed choice...

Therese gives me a death glare, "Did we have any reason to trust you at that point, Mr. Vampire?"

"Guess not... So what is the issue with this? I don't understand yet."

She explains, "The whole class is a trap. First, take the third skill. You might be happy to gain an extra class that doesn't count towards your class limit but it still increases the stat requirements for other classes you want to add later. In case you're curious, its stats are poor."

Academic Growth Rates

5 HP, 8 MP, 7 SP, 0 STR, 2 DEX, 1 VIT, 1 MAG, 1 FTH, 1 WIL, 2 CHA

So it adds nearly nothing towards the stat total but it still drives the stat requirements up because it is one more class, "Who designs this crap..."

She explains, "This made actual sense with the old formula for stat requirements before a patch eleven to twelve years ago changed that. Back then, the number of classes had less of an influence than it seems to have now. We're not sure actually, we haven't nailed down the new formula yet."

"Ah, you can ask Elly for that, she has it from... somewhere."

She sounds delighted, "Then I'd like to take you up on that offer, would save our science team a couple of years. Anyway, the final issue with Magic Initiate is that we're not sure if the stat bonuses from skills are even counted toward stat requirements, we have conflicting results on that front. Skills like [Health Boost] seem to count, while [Strength Boost] doesn't."

"I guess that would explain why Maria has a lot of pluses on her stats while Elly has only a plus on STR from the training skill but the SP increase from [Stamina Boost] is integrated into the total value."

Therese adds, "Well, just be happy by now your 'sphere' of classes is no longer relevant. When I was young, leaving it was three times as hard... Either way, we're not willing to waste Class Cores on such an experiment when the math already says it can't possibly work and we'd need a decade before we get any further results. We're just as likely to get another system update that messes everything up again before then."

Since when do we have a science team?

"Okay, I get it, I'll drop that idea. What else are these scientists working on?"

Therese yawns, "State secrets. I'll show you later today together with the other stuff. But can you tell me if the changed requirement formula got rid of the LB and PV functions? Those were the worst."

"I think it was just normal multiplication. What are LB and PV? I've never heard of those functions."

She explains, "Are you familiar with logarithms? LB is that with base 420 of your birth year. And PV... no idea how to explain that one. Our best method to calculate that, requires three sheets of paper, a compass and a metronome."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"That... doesn't sound like something a sane person would use in such an important feature... so they probably did, yeah..."

Therese yawns some more, her eyes looking as if they are about to fall shut.

I almost feel pity for her, "You look like you're in dire need of caffeine poisoning..."

She responds, "What? Why would I? I've slept a whole five hours last night..."

"No, that doesn't sound healthy."

She sighs, "Tell me something I don't know."

I take out a sheet of paper, "I mean, I can try. I tried to think of a few measures to improve the situation with the flood."

She changes her posture, "Now I'm curious."

"Let's see... since we're suffering from a food and material shortage we should conscript civilians to also join the weekly dungeon explorations."

She rolls her eyes, "I see you haven't yet looked through all existing laws. Participation for everyone of age fifteen or older is mandatory at least once a month unless they have a suitable reason like a lasting injury. We're hosting each Tuesday and Wednesday escorted trips. A couple of our trained soldiers volunteer to accompany six civilians each. We're lending them some equipment as well. These groups mostly hide behind the safe zone walls and poke the monsters from that safety. Though through a lack of experience and skills, they don't deal that much damage, so they rarely clear even the first floor."

I still have my titanium materials as an option, "Maybe we should invest in better equipment then."

She shakes her head, "Pointless. If you lack the relevant training skills, equipment breaks very quickly."

Reminds me of a certain boss fight I had, "So my experience with shields breaking near instantly wasn't just bad luck?"

She explains, "Probably not. They go through hundreds of weapons each week, most end up beyond repair and have to be scrapped. At least it keeps smiths in practice, gotta raise their crafting levels somehow."

"Okay, my bad. Speaking of, why is there a limitation of one trip per week?"

Therese elaborates, "According to our research, when you enter a dungeon again sooner than six days twenty-two hours after your last visit everything goes haywire in there. No one that tried sooner has returned. According to reports from thousands of years ago, a Summoner sent his spirits inside and they ended up in the middle of the dungeon, over a couple of trials they appeared randomly between floor thirty and ninety. Even when they sent in multiple spirits at the same time, they didn't even arrive on the same floor. Aside from that, there were other changes but the reports didn't go into details we could understand."

So what I experienced wasn't really out of the ordinary but the norm? ...thanks, Darius...

But that means once we have become strong enough to fully clear a dungeon we could infinitely repeat it while time outside stands still. This could become interesting once we have access to one of the easier dungeons.

"Speaking of unexplainable, why is Darius in charge? He doesn't exactly seem fit for this job."

She shrugs, "He lost drawing straws. This also involves something I need to show you later."

"Alright, back to the ideas I had... Earlier I saw that gravity doesn't exactly work as expected but what's stopping you from preparing spiked pit traps in advance?"

She says, "This year, the flood came much earlier than anticipated, we didn't have time to prepare any pits, spiked or otherwise. Even if we had, the traps aren't lethal to most monsters, the traps would just quickly fill up."

"Then dig deeper?"

Therese explains, "No, that doesn't help either. Once the pit becomes too deep, monsters that fall in just reappear unharmed next to the pits. No one understands how they do that."

Noted, videogame logic, "Okay... what about trebuchets or catapults?"

She frowns, "Too deteriorated to use and we have no luck with finding the materials in the dungeon to repair them or build new ones. Also, before you continue that route, I got complaints about your earlier 'ingenious' idea of throwing literal garbage at the monsters. Some people contracted illnesses."

"Oops... err, changing the topic. What about just sticks or stones?"

Therese scoffs, "Do you really take us for that stupid?"

"Uh, maybe?"

She sighs, "I'm not in the mood for jokes. Everything in terms of woodwork is needed somewhere else like on the farms. And last I checked, stones don't grow on trees."

I mean, I could create throwable stones thanks to my [Magical Secret] skill.

"Alright, what about-"

Therese interrupts me, "Let me cut this short...", she takes a deep breath, "Poisoned bait and gas are disallowed, blame your predecessor for that. We don't have any more radioactive stones, the fairies took the remaining ones with them when they fled to safety. Trick traps also don't work without fairies. We don't have Type-E68 batteries for SAP- or SNMP traps. Folk music used to work until it didn't, no clues as to what changed. We tried our hands at building combat robots, you might have seen these automatons walking around outside."

"Err, did you give them rocket punches at least?"

She sighs, "Tried, but couldn't. We can't even determine which classes they get. They are just like normal people in most regards, well, aside from a life expectancy of about two to three years."

"What a disappointment."

She continues, "And before you ask, yes, we do have Power Suits, but they require the same type of power cells as Magitek Rifles and the latter are much more important in case another flying menace appears. Last thing I could think of, would be throwing Jack at the monsters which is considered animal cruelty. Does that cover everything or do you actually have anything new, Jared?"

"Wait, wait, we have magitek?"

Therese explains, "Only a few prototypes our researchers are working on. Did you never check the materials you brought back? What else would you use H-418 materials for, Jared?"

"Dunno, build teapots?"

She is dumbfounded, "...really?"

"Uh, if you have mustard laying around we could try building mustard bombs?"

She tries to process what I just said, "I've no idea what mustard is but it sounds disgusting."

What did you just say? "Now I see that peace was never an option."

She shrugs, "Eh, not a loss for me. I only have to endure you a couple more months and then I can enjoy my afterlife."

I mean, I could foil her 'plan' by making her a familiar, "Technically, you won't have an afterlife..."

She frowns, "I don't know what you mean and I don't think I want to know. Just promise me that when I die that you leave my corpse alone. No necromancy or other business, please. Can I ask at least that of you?"

"Sorry, that is not up to me. As long as the demon artifact exists this world is sealed off, meaning no soul can leave. So you either joked about your time being up soon, you swear fealty to me and gain the same benefits as Chloe, or you just cease to exist when your time is up."

She is speechless. After a moment she composes herself again, "Right, you told us that before. No, I still refuse to believe that."

"Ultimately that is your call. Just know that my offer is only valid until we've exhausted our limit on familiars."

Therese is a bit down, "Yeah, yeah, right..."

"This brings me to my next point. We're looking to recruit two more groups as familiars. Chloe may have already told you, if not, I got a title that allows my familiars to add a few classes without needing Class Cores."

She sighs, "Chloe has not. And I have to admit that we don't know much about your [Familiar] skill or skills that interact with it. Vampires have never been on our side in the past."

"They haven't? That is strange, I thought the first vampire was a Lost One, should they have been on your side at that time?"

She looks around, then turns to me again, "This is something that MUST stay confidential. Not even the church knows or at least would admit it but that Lost One was not on our side. According to reports left over from that time, they joined the demon's side and waged war against mankind."

"I guess they were far from the only Lost One that betrayed you?"

She nods, "Yeah, how did you figure that out?"

"Supposedly there were fifty-eight Lost Ones before me, but back at the church, their count was barely at thirty."

Therese is shocked, "Fifty-eight? We have only accounted for forty-seven. But...", she does silent.

"That's at least about another twenty. What did they do to not be acknowledged by the church?"

She gathers herself, "Please keep this to yourself. Twelve of them either joined the demons or became full-blooded monsters, losing all forms of reason. The rest... sacrificed themselves for what I need to show you later."

That still leaves about a dozen nobody knows about. Though I can guess that they were just unlucky with their initial spawn locations and died before reaching any kind of civilization.

Or whoever sent Anna is not from the same faction and had found 'our' Lost Ones and then unfound them for good.

I sigh, "You keep telling me that it is something secret, that you need to show me before it makes any sense, but you don't give me the slightest hint of what I'm in for. At this point, you just sound like a broken record."

She leans in and whispers, "It is something that must not be known publically, under any circumstances."

"Fine, I just hope the payout is worth it..."

Therese tells me, "It is but not in a good way. I hope Clara is done soon so we can get that over with... Anything else you wanted?"

"Fine, if you don't want to talk about it, I've got a few other topics to take care of. In the documents you gave me, there was a huge discrepancy between the funds the military receives and the listed expenses. Over half of it is not accounted for. I suspect we're dealing with embezzlement here."

"Can you show me the sheet for that?", she requests.

I hand her the paper, "Here."

She frowns, "I know I sound like a broken record here, but that is also related to what I need to show you once Clara prepares the required clearance. Please believe me when I say this MUST be under any circumstances stay on a need-to-know base. Chloe doesn't know, not even Darius does, it is imperative that it is kept a secret. NOT. A. WORD. TO. ANYONE."

"I won't promise anything until I know what the hell is up."

"Understandable", She tries to change the topic, "Anything else I could help you with?"

"Not really. As I said before, we planned to expand how many familiars we employ, so I wanted to ask you for your expertise in finding decent personnel but given the track record today, it probably has to wait until after I have seen 'it'. Whatever 'it' is. Can I at least get a hint? Just waiting is boring and as it is you haven't given me the slightest reason to look forward to it."

Therese writes something down, "I'll make a note for it. I'll be frank with you I'm not too fond of the idea of you turning more people into familiars."

"Chloe suggested it, she thought it might be a way to get some of the injured soldiers back into the fight once the superior regeneration of being one of my familiars kicks in."

She sighs, "Then I really need to have a word with her..."

We exchange a few more words about our opinions on the whole familiar feature, she is obviously against it.

Finally, a soldier knocks on the door, "It's me, Clara. I've finished the preparations."

Aside from a ponytail sticking out of her helm, I can't make out any features. She's completely covered in armor.

"What's with the getup, are we going to war now?"

Clara hands Therese a can of coffee.

Therese explains while she fills one cup with coffee, "That is not too far off actually. The place we're going to can indeed be dangerous. But we'll be fine as long as you follow our instructions."

This just guarantees that something will go wrong, "Can I save my game first?"

"What does that mean?", asks Clara.

Therese hands the cup of coffee to Clara and downs the remainder of the can herself.

"Nevermind... Are we going now?"

Therese stands up, "Yes. Clara, please lead the way."

She salutes, "Affirmative!"

We go down into a storage room in the cellar.

Most of the room is covered in shelves full of dusty books and document binders.

Therese quickly looks around, "No one else is here. You know what to do Clara."

The tin can nods, "Yes. Step aside please."

She pushes me to the side and sticks her hand behind one of the tomes. Then she chants something, "One who is darker than twilight. One who is redder than the blood that flows. Buried in the flow of time. In thy great name-"

Therese rolls her eyes, "Ignore that show-off, you just have to touch the hidden switch with a security card."

"Spoilsport", scoffs Clara.

A small rumbling can be heard, but I can't see any changes.

"Follow me", orders Clara.

She walks through a wall between the shelves.

"An illusion?"

Therese responds, "Yes, but no more dawdling."

She takes out a torch and then walks ahead through the wall.

The illusory wall even feels solid when I carefully try to touch it but when I apply some strength I can easily pass through it. Weird effect.

Behind the wall are just stairs leading down.

Therese urges me, "Stop standing there and get moving."

We walk down the winding stairs for a couple of minutes. How deep does this go?

Some more minutes later, I can hear some kind of bleeping alarm noise.

Therese frowns, "Goddamnit, it moved again."